[IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and "Mastering" Educational SW

[Bill Kerr]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:48 AM, Maria Droujkova <droujkova at gmail.com>wrote:

> > From: K. K. Subramaniam <subbukk at gmail.com>
> >
> > On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 11:23:24 pm Alan Kay wrote:
> >> what is more interesting is how well certain ways of thinking work
> >> in finding strong models of phenomena compared to others.
> > This is the part that interests me too ...
> >> So, if we get
> >> pneumonia, there are lots of paradigms to choose from, but I'm betting
> >> that
> >> most will choose the one that knows how to find out about bacteria and
> how
> >> to make antibiotics.
> > ... and this is where I get stuck ;-), particularly in the context of
> school
> > education (first 12 years). Unlike the 3Rs, thinking processes have no
> > external
> > manifestation that parents/teachers can monitor, assess or assist. The
> > economic value of deep thinking is not realized until many years later.
> The
> > latency between 'input' and 'output' can be as large as 12 years and
> > 'evaluation' of output may stretch into decades!
>
> I beg to differ here, Subbu. Any time you do any sort of meaningful project
> with a person of any age, deep thinking manifests itself most strikingly.
> Here are some household examples:
>
> - Deep idea: random events. A toddler pushes a pet bunny off a high place.
> The mother says that unlike kittens, rabbits can break their legs this way,
> but the toddler thinks since it did not happen this once, it won't ever
> happen. The mother takes a glass outside and rolls it down the stairs,
> several times. It breaks at fourth roll. Toddler experiments with breakable
> objects more to explore the idea of "sometimes." They keep discussing this
> big idea of "sometimes" and experimenting. A few years down the road, the
> mother relates to the kid how this guy was saying, "I smoked all my life and
> I am fine" - and they laugh at it, together. Probability and statistics
> comes in later still. Meanwhile, the bunny's safe, and a whole host of
> dangers that happens "sometimes" are easy to communicate to the toddler.
>
> - Deep tool: graphs. Several kids play with graphs qualitatively (a-la
> http://thisisindexed.com/). What comes of it? When the 5yo math club
> members yell too loud, the leader makes a "yelling graph" kids follow up and
> down in volume, as it's being drawn, thereby obtaining control. When a 10yo
> experiences a strange math anxiety, she draws a graph of her mood vs.
> problem solving events, and analyzes it for possible patterns. When a tween
> and teen group discusses game design, they compare learning curves for apps
> and games they know and make design decisions correspondingly.


i wish I had thought of this for my noisy special class :-)

>
> - Deep collective reasoning: kites. A 3-5 Reggio Emilia group decides to
> make kites together. Adults provide books and supplies, kids work on
> patterns and sketch and photograph their ideas. It takes listening and
> coordinating; their peacekeepers of the day resolve conflicts. Kites change
> from day to day, becoming increasingly complex.



Great examples Maria but Subbu may still be correct - in that some deep
thinking takes years to emerge clearly or it might appear then get buried
due to peer pressure and then reappear again later, etc. I would say that
you are both right.

I have heard it mentioned a few times that it takes 10 years for genius to
emerge, eg. Mozart started at 5yo but did not display genius until 15yo

btw how would the mother know that the toddler did not believe her if the
toddler did not voice their dissent? it takes a smart mother to guess that
the toddler does not believe and go through the rolling the glass down the
stairs routine if the toddler does not object - my general point being that
much growth is silent, hard to or almost impossible to observe

also see minsky 'society of mind' section 7:10 Genius


>
>
> Cheers,
> Maria Droujkova
>
> Make math your own, to make your own math.
>
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